Effective Practices
Make retention an explicit goal that your entire program supports through a comprehensive plan
- Create a group or committee charged with developing and implementing a comprehensive retention plan. Ensure this group is given adequate resources and time on department meeting agendas.
- Encourage faculty members, collectively and individually, to think creatively and ambitiously about your department’s future and about potential strategies to attain your retention goals. For example, sponsor periodic brainstorming sessions at faculty meetings, and dedicate time to generating ideas for retention during departmental retreats.
- Regularly discuss retention data and strategies at faculty meetings.
- Develop faculty awareness of retention, degree pathways, and career pathways, e.g., through discussions in department meetings, perhaps in collaboration with campus career services or your student success center, of what resources are available to support students, common career pathways, anonymized reasons why students have left your program, and potential strategies to support retention.
- Ensure that your faculty appreciate the value of diverse career goals and recognize that because only a small fraction of physics majors go on to faculty jobs, most students are likely to have very different needs than current faculty had as students.
- Formally recognize and reward faculty who lead and participate in retention strategies by, for example, taking these contributions into account in tenure, promotion, merit, and annual reviews; providing release time for bigger projects; or providing additional travel support.
- Recognize the department chair’s essential role in establishing department culture and climate and the critical role this plays in facilitating retention. See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for details.
- Recognize that improving retention may require major overhauls to your program, some of which may be uncomfortable (e.g., some faculty may have strongly-held, differing opinions of what should be required to complete a major), and be willing to push for change. See the section on How to Create and Sustain Effective Change for details.
- Use appropriate campus resources (e.g., your office of equity, diversity, and inclusion; or your human resources office) or see the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for details on how to implement the strategies below.
- Recognize that strategies (i.e., treating everyone the same regardless of race or ethnicity) do not explicitly address the needs of students from and are insufficient to support and retain these students.
- Create a program in which students from will have a positive experience.
- Pay attention to race, gender, identity, national or geographic origin, socioeconomic status, homelessness, first-generation status, age, and religion, and how these personal factors might impact students’ ability to succeed in your program.
- Challenge yourself and your faculty to understand the needs and experiences of students who may be different from you.
- Ensure faculty and staff are given appropriate training and support to effectively work with students from diverse backgrounds.
- Partner with upper-level administrators, recognizing that they are held accountable for retention and graduation goals and command resources that can be used to support your strategies. Work with them to make their jobs easier and get their support.
- Develop relationships with staff in your offices of advising and financial aid as partners to support the mutual goals of student retention and graduation, e.g., by providing these staff with information on physics careers, program design, and course sequences.
- Understand the metrics your institution uses to measure your department’s success, and align your goals with those metrics, e.g., four-, five-, or six-year graduation rates; enrollment; pass rates; state performance metrics; alumni success; student credit hours; and student/faculty ratios.
- Understand your institution’s strategic plan and frame your department’s retention initiatives to show how they support it.
- Partner with the office that supports campus equity, diversity, and inclusion to align departmental goals in this area with overarching institutional goals and to make use of resources this office can provide.
- See Programmatic Assessments below for examples of how to collect data from students.
- Form a diverse chair’s advisory committee of undergraduate students to identify concerns and opportunities, and act on recommendations made by this group.
- Institute a robust mechanism by which any member of your department can alert leadership if they sense concerns from students that could impact retention.
- Solicit input from all graduating seniors for suggestions to improve the undergraduate physics experience.
- See Programmatic Assessments below for examples of relevant data to collect.
- Use data to diagnose problems with retention that your plan should address, e.g., how many students are leaving your program, which students are leaving and at what stage, why they are leaving, and what obstacles in your courses and curriculum make it difficult for students to complete your program, especially transfer students and late switchers into physics.
- Recognize that if your program is small, qualitative data from exit surveys are still useful for understanding strengths and challenges but are less likely to be generalizable, and you will need to rely more heavily on national data and national best practices.
- Understand who your students are (e.g., their backgrounds, interests, and educational and career aspirations) and how your program is meeting or failing to meet their needs. Collect data on students’ needs and experiences before, during, and after their participation in your program, and adjust your program accordingly.
- Track the progress of every student and develop mechanisms for identifying and addressing concerns. Consider partnering with your advising office, which may have tracking systems in place.
- Develop effective mechanisms to collect, store, and share information about your physics graduates. Collect persistent contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, and professional social media accounts) and career placement information for all graduates before they leave campus, and follow up to track them through their careers.
- Compare your department’s data to those of physics departments of similar size and mission in other institutions to get a reality check on your progress and have comparison data to provide to administrators.
- Use data to assess and shape your retention plan.
- Discuss the plan, along with a review of its effectiveness, with members of your department, including faculty, staff, and focus groups of current students and alumni; with your administration; and with supporting campus offices.
- Ask for an outside analysis of the plan during your program or when updating the plan. See the section on How to Undertake an Undergraduate Program Review for details.
Nurture a community atmosphere and a departmental identity, culture, and climate of respect and student advocacy
- See the sections on Departmental Culture and Climate and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for details on how to implement the strategies below.
- Implement inclusion practices that seek out and promote the unique contributions of students with diverse perspectives, e.g., hold a listening session to hear students’ experiences and publicly advocate for their recommendations.
- Treat physics majors and minors as respected junior members of your department and the physics community.
- Involve students in appropriate components of departmental governance, e.g., have students participate in search committees and/or curriculum committees, have a student representative who attends department meetings and reports back to other students, and involve students in meeting visitors to your department, including , faculty candidates, seminar or colloquium speakers, and alumni.
- Encourage faculty and students to learn and correctly pronounce the names and pronouns of all physics majors and minors.
- Encourage faculty to adopt and advertise an open-door policy in addition to formal office hours.
- Encourage faculty to get to know students by asking about their experiences and career plans during one-on-one meetings. See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for guidance on how to support all advisors and mentors in developing personal and supportive relationships with students.
- Advocate on behalf of students when developing policies and negotiating with your administration.
- Establish shared spaces where physics majors can work and learn together and where interaction with faculty members is available. See the section on The Physical Environment: Encouraging Collaboration and Learning for guidance on how to provide and manage inclusive and welcoming spaces where students can gather and collaborate and to use current and future spaces to exhibit departmental culture, community, and accomplishments.
- Regularly assess your climate and reevaluate how to improve it using the Programmatic Assessments below.
- Create and support several distinctive offerings and features within your program, e.g., a high school physics teacher preparation program, connections to local industries, an exceptionally supportive and caring environment, enhanced opportunities for undergraduate research or internships, and high-quality capstone experiences.
- See the section on How to Create and Use a Strategic Plan for details on how to build these distinctive elements.
- Cultivate a departmental spirit, ethos, and atmosphere that underscore and celebrate the strengths, accomplishments, and ambitions of your program.
- Celebrate the successes of your students through, e.g., newsletters, wall plaques, seminars by students on their research or internships (including how they found and obtained the experience), and a department-wide award ceremony (with strong faculty attendance) to recognize student accomplishments.
- Celebrate the successes of your graduates through, e.g., post-career success stories and/or statistics about graduates' careers on the departmental website, annual reports to donors and alumni, a hallway monitor with announcements and examples of successful careers (such as the APS Career Options for Physicists), and regular alumni career panels.
- Use your program to help shape your departmental identity. Use the same multiple times or have some previous visitors overlap with newer ones to more effectively evaluate progress. See the section on How to Undertake an Undergraduate Program Review for details.
- Make department T-shirts and engage students in creating an inclusive message and design.
- Encourage majors to think of themselves as junior members of the physics community by referring to them as physicists, exposing them to the diverse pursuits physicists undertake, drawing connections between their studies and the work of professional physicists, and letting them know they are important members of your department and that faculty depend on them.
- Support students to attend regional or national meetings of physics organizations (e.g., or ), including those for , e.g., , , , , , and .
- Encourage students (and faculty) to participate in mentoring organizations within professional societies such as the .
- Encourage faculty members to share aspects of their lives (e.g., their interests outside of physics or how they overcame struggles in a course as a student) that allow students to see faculty as whole human beings and to imagine themselves in faculty members’ positions.
- Maintain connections with recent graduates and invite them to interact with current undergraduates as formal or informal mentors, attend department events, judge student posters or presentations, serve as colloquium speakers, or simply eat a meal with students.
- Encourage majors to regularly read publications such as Physics Today, Physics, American Journal of Physics, The Physics Teacher, SPS Observer, APS News, and newsletters from physics groups.
- Make sure undergraduates, including majors and prospective majors, are invited and feel welcome, and that faculty and staff (including postdocs) come as well.
- Announce events in all physics classes.
- Welcome new students to your department with a student-faculty meal or picnic. Include senior undergraduates and graduate students who can act as mentors to incoming physics majors.
- Host get-togethers for faculty, students, and students’ families.
- Stimulate intellectual and social interaction among students and between students and faculty members outside of class contexts through regular departmental lunches, a physics table at the campus dining hall, afternoon teas, informal physics chats or discussions around departmental whiteboards, movie nights, game nights, and picnics. See the section on Departmental Culture and Climate for guidance on how to hold regular social events that are inclusive of all department members.
- Have a robust seminar or colloquium series that appeals to undergraduate students. See the section on Departmental Culture and Climate for guidance on how to hold regular academic and professional events that are inclusive of all department members.
- Encourage the creation of student groups such as chapters, student chapters of national organizations for students of color, local clubs for women or students of color in physics, study groups, and other student social networks.
- Ensure student clubs have a yearly budget to support club outreach activities, supplies, and dues for membership. Provide departmental funds and/or help identify external funds such as institutional support for student clubs or external grants, e.g., APS Women in Physics Group Grants.
- Provide an engaged faculty mentor for student clubs. Support this mentor with release from some additional service commitments. Encourage the faculty mentor or chair to contact national organizations (e.g., , , , , , , and ) or from local companies for help creating or maintaining a local chapter.
- Encourage clubs to adopt bylaws that provide for rotating leadership with position-specific responsibilities (e.g., the president organizes meetings and the vice-president publishes the newsletter) as opposed to re-electing popular students. Regularly rotating leadership roles, (as practiced by, for example, divisions) promotes leadership training and encourages sustained engagement by more students.
- Encourage student participation by announcing club events and promoting membership in physics classes, particularly first-year classes, and on department bulletin boards and hallway monitors.
- Set clear expectations for inclusivity and behavior for members of these organizations (e.g., adopt a code of conduct) and monitor organizational activities for inclusiveness and student safety.
- Provide student clubs with their own room in the physics building.
- Include social or informational meetings, outreach and engagement activities, community service, lectures by faculty and visiting scientists, field trips, and student research presentations.
Implement a relevant, high-quality, accessible curriculum that is supported throughout your institution
- Create effective and engaging classes using the guidelines in the sections on Supporting Research-Based Teaching in Your Department and Implementing Research-Based Teaching in Your Classroom.
- See the sections on Instructional Laboratory and Experimental Skills, Computational Skills, Communications Skills, and Career Preparation for guidance on improving the teaching of specific skills throughout your curriculum.
- Consider implementing a or other program for undergraduate instructional assistants.
- Have at least one annual department-wide meeting to discuss the physics major and how you engage students in understanding their degree options. Involve all faculty who interact with undergraduates, whether or not they are teaching. Encourage senior undergraduate students to participate.
- Use faculty meeting time to provide constructive feedback to support successful curriculum reforms. In these discussions, consider the breadth of professional opportunities and experiences pursued by your students.
- Ensure that the difficulty of required courses increases gradually throughout the sequence from introductory through advanced courses, recognizing that not all students will take courses in the same order.
- Ensure that instructors in courses required in each degree track teach within the prerequisites of the course and within the planned level of sophistication of the course.
- Notice when a course is much harder than usual, which can damage students’ confidence and grades, or easier than usual, which can fail to prepare students for future classes. Work with the instructors of such courses to ensure that each course is taught at the appropriate level. Identify such courses by paying attention to when a cohort of students complains, has unusually poor grades, struggles with subsequent courses, or drops out of the course or the major at a high rate.
- Consider alternate degree tracks that might require fewer advanced physics courses. Once implemented, ensure students are aware of these options and the opportunities and limitations associated with these routes. See the section on Degree Tracks for details.
- See the section on How to Assess Student Learning at the Program Level for details on how to establish and assess to ensure that your program and courses are serving your students well.
- Ensure that instructors understand how their prepare students for subsequent courses and relate to previous courses.
- Ensure that courses in your program explicitly develop skills and norms including effective collaborative learning, communication skills, openness to making and learning from mistakes, and willingness to engage peers, faculty, and others for help.
- Use a variety of indicators to assess your program and courses, including classroom measures, passing rates, number of switchers into major, subsequent course grades, and student evaluations. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for details.
- Learn about your students’ interests and goals, and include topics relevant to those goals throughout your curriculum.
- Intentionally discuss modern applications of physics in every class.
- Encourage faculty to create assignments that address physics topics mentioned in current popular science literature and news, e.g., a recent discovery in physics, the physics involved in renewable energy technologies, or the physics behind a recent natural disaster.
- Recognize the key role of introductory courses in sparking and maintaining students’ interest in physics and keeping them in the major.
- See the section on Introductory Courses for STEM Majors for details.
- Create a first-year seminar class, e.g., a one-credit-hour class required for all physics majors with information about physics careers and compelling talks and laboratory visits by faculty, showcasing their research.
- Assign department members who are widely recognized as good teachers to teach introductory majors’ courses.
- Ensure that intermediate-level courses also have excellent instructors and provide support for the transition to more difficult upper-level courses. For example, ensure that these courses include discussions of what math and physics courses to take next; how to manage the increasing difficulty of these courses; how to get involved in departmental seminars, events, and clubs; and invitations to presentations on getting summer research positions, finding internships, finding an advisor, and/or how to work in a study-abroad experience.
- Recognize that high-quality and relevant upper-level courses are necessary to support students’ development and ensure their satisfaction with the physics major, and that even first-year students will evaluate whether to stay in the major based on other students’ reports about their experiences in these courses.
- See the section on Upper-Level Physics Curriculum for details.
- Encourage faculty working groups to design changes to particular upper-level courses.
- Provide time in department meetings for faculty to share innovations they have tried in the classroom.
- Work with the math department to ensure that their courses serve your students, e.g., regularly discuss the skills your students need and the timelines for when those skills are needed, assist them in bringing physics-related examples into their courses, and consider working with them to create special sections of math courses for physics majors.
- Work with other departments and perhaps your dean to ensure that required writing courses provide opportunities for clear technical writing.
- Broaden the departments that you work with beyond math, computer science, chemistry, and engineering, to provide students with opportunities to study and do interdisciplinary projects in various fields, e.g., business, economics, art, dance, and life sciences.
- See the sections on Undergraduate Research, Internships, and Capstone Experiences for more details.
- Provide opportunities for students to learn about these experiences and communicate the expectation that students participate in them, e.g., by having research faculty who supervise undergraduate research visit first-year courses to discuss their research at an appropriate mathematical and scientific level, or by having a seminar devoted to students presenting their research.
- Provide opportunities for students to participate in research within your department beginning in their first year, which can build friendships and trust among students at different levels and individual faculty.
- Integrate students as full participants in these experiences as early as possible to provide a needed sense of community and belonging.
- Collaborate with your campus internship office and/or alumni to find internship opportunities in which physics majors could be involved.
- Track and measure student involvement in these experiences and how such involvement impacts retention.
- Create enrichment courses that go beyond standard coursework, e.g., career seminars or journal clubs.
Offer degree programs or tracks that are flexible and relevant for students with a wide variety of backgrounds, interests, and career aspirations
- Pay special attention to obstacles for transfer students and late switchers into physics.
- Check for limited-enrollment courses, including prerequisite courses in other departments, that may be delaying students who can't get in.
- Check for delays caused by the interaction between course prerequisites and the timing and frequency with which courses are offered, as well as by students studying abroad or pursuing double majors.
- Identify courses that have high failure and withdrawal rates, determine why these rates are high, and take action to remedy the issues you identify.
- Identify courses that may not be effectively preparing students for subsequent courses.
- Partner with your office of institutional research for predictive course- and program-level analysis to identify strategic goals for improvement.
- Design or modify each degree track so that students can complete the required courses within a 4-year (or, ideally, a 3-year) period, either by modifying existing degree tracks or by designing new tracks. This may require negotiation and adjustments from within the physics department and/or from supporting departments such as modifying course offerings, availability, co-requisites, or prerequisites.
- If feasible, offer each introductory and intermediate course every term, including summer terms, to allow students who transition into the major later the flexibility to catch up and stay on track.
- Work with departments that have common double majors with physics to ensure that required courses don’t conflict.
- If you don’t have the staffing or classroom space to address obstacles you've identified in your curriculum, consider alternate ways for students to learn the required skills, e.g., independent study, work-study assignments, or satisfying curricular requirements in part through internships.
- See the section on Career Preparation for more details about educating students about diverse career pathways and integrating needed knowledge and skills into your curriculum and extracurricular activities.
- Recognize that most of your students will not go to graduate school and even fewer will become faculty, and wholeheartedly support students in pursuing a variety of careers.
- Ensure that faculty routinely highlight in classes the variety of physics careers, especially those that require only a bachelor’s degree.
- Ensure that faculty advisors and mentors discuss career options with students early in their studies, during their first or second years.
- Highlight careers of your graduates, e.g., by inviting alumni to talk about their careers and paths to success, and by creating a library of physics major success stories to use in public presentations, on the departmental website, and in advertising or marketing materials.
- Prepare students who want to go to graduate school by educating them about the application process and requirements, e.g., explain reference letters and steps to receive positive recommendations, explain how the GRE works, and advertise deadlines. See the section on Preparing Students for Graduate School in Physics and Related Fields for details.
- See the sections on Degree Tracks and Dual-Degree Programs for details.
- Map several pathways through a physics degree that include different initial mathematics courses based on level of preparation, options to include other majors and minors, and transfer student pathways.
- Ensure that your pathways are flexible and can accommodate students with a wide variety of starting points, levels of preparation, and interests.
- Provide options for interdisciplinary programs or tracks, e.g., biophysics, medical physics, geophysics, atmospheric physics, environmental physics, engineering physics, and/or physics education.
- Educate advisors to ensure advising is based on students’ goals, interests, and needs.
- Educate professional advisors outside of your department to take a positive attitude toward majoring in physics.
- Look at the course and career pathways taken by prior graduates and examine both positive and negative outcomes for examples on which to build future pathways.
Create and leverage support structures for students
- See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for details on how to implement the strategies below.
- Facilitate quality advising by developing advisor training and expectations and providing a decision matrix based on course outcomes.
- Encourage advisors to work with students to develop a plan of action for times when students struggle with course progression or with financial or personal challenges.
- Encourage advisors to get to know their students and offer broad advising that goes beyond simply recommending courses or encouraging graduate studies.
- Encourage faculty to mentor students to help them realize their career goals.
- Establish a mentoring program in which students are assigned faculty and/or alumni mentors.
- Establish a peer-mentoring program, or a near-peer mentoring program involving graduate students and postdocs, building in training for mentors and structure to ensure the program benefits both mentors and mentees.
- See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for guidance on how to help students become successful learners.
- Engage all department members who interact with students, e.g., classroom instructors, instructional support staff, advisors, and mentors, to ensure students have reasonable workloads and support to manage these workloads.
- Make students aware that struggling with academics is normal, e.g., by encouraging faculty and advanced students to share their own struggles.
- Make students aware that learning to organize and prioritize takes time, e.g., by explicitly including activities about time management in classes.
- Advertise support mechanisms that are available when students struggle with academics and time management.
- Provide tutoring in your department, and advertise it well.
- Help each class work as a cohort within which peer-to-peer assistance is encouraged. For example, encourage students to work together on homework, facilitate students forming study groups, establish a common study time or homework session for specific classes during which students work together and the instructor is available to answer questions.
- Encourage faculty to identify struggling students early, i.e., in the first few weeks of any class, and reach out personally to support these students while there is still time to improve. Signs of struggle may include missing class, not handing in homework, or inattention in class.
- Encourage your faculty to view struggling students as needing support to reach their full potential, rather than as inherently lacking in the intelligence needed to pursue physics. See Evidence below.
- See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for details.
- Ensure all faculty advisors and mentors have a relationship with campus career services staff.
- Identify and advertise campus offices that help with academic, emotional, and mental health support.
- Identify and advertise campus-wide initiatives focused on .
- Look into existing resources such as placement programs and boot camps.
- Create programs to support students if your campus does not offer them.
- Learn to identify potential signs of financial strain and how to gently approach struggling students if necessary. Work with your financial aid office for guidance.
- Provide and promote paid research and teaching opportunities to reduce students' financial burdens, especially for students who need to work to pay for college. At the same time, recognize the limitations of these opportunities; for example, some scholarships or research or teaching positions might affect a student's financial aid picture and not necessarily benefit the student.
- Identify scholarships, student support funds, and other sources of economic support for your students.
- Learn about financial support your institution provides, such as short-term loans, to help students complete their course of study and graduate.
- Create a degree completion fund by working with your development or fundraising office, your alumni, foundations, and/or other donors, including current faculty.
- Develop or improve a departmental website and social media presence that make it easy for students to learn about departmental programs and support structures.
- Ensure that your website includes information about research opportunities with faculty on campus.
- Ensure that your website and social media accounts include information about departmental community-building activities and events.
- Ensure that your website includes up-to-date advising documents, e.g., degree checklists, flowcharts of paths through the major, career planning materials, etc.
- Survey your students to determine how best to communicate with them, e.g., through email, text, or messaging apps. Get students’ agreement to contact them when needed. Regularly send them announcements about research opportunities and departmental events.
